The Lonely Planet travel experts stress you can't go around the world without seeing the beauty of the Taj Mahal which is the main reason why we included India in our trip. It sure as hell wasn't their spices! What they don't tell you is that this stuff puts a whole in your head... But I digress...
The Taj is a beautiful piece of architecture, the symbol of India and it was built during an extremely interesting time in history:
Here's the background. The Taj Mahal was built by the 5th Mughal Emperor Jahan in honour of his marriage to Empress Mumtaz Maha as an everlasting monument of their love. As a Muslim, he had 3 other wives but it is said he only really loved this one (right)! This building is said to be the most beautiful in the world and is described as "a dream of marble". It took twenty two years to build and 22,000 workers. Jahan spared no money because as Emperor he was arguably the richest man in the world:
Today, their bodies lie in the Taj Mahal. But there's more to this story. Agra was the centre of India rule for three centuries (1500s to 1700s) when the Muslim Mughals took control of the country. There were a total of 6 Mughal Emperors during this time. These Emperors built magnificent palaces by adding on to each other- they are called the Agra Fort which doesn't really describe the magnificence of these palaces:
As 5th Emperor, when Jahan was building his palace, the Empress died so he also built the Taj as a beautiful mausoleum in her honour just across the river from the palaces.
According to history, Maha and Jahan had 6 surviving children, 2 girls and 4 boys. It turns out that the third male, Aurangzeb, was a very aggressive guy and wanted to rule and not wait till his Dad died. He also wanted to make sure that none of his brothers would take control. So he kills the Number 1 son and gives the head to his Dad saying "you wanted him to rule but he couldn't even keep his head on"; he also ordered his other brothers killed and puts his Dad in house arrest and jailed 'in residence' till his death.
The story continues; the ex-Emperor is jailed but really he gets a nice apartment in the palace he already built and he can see his beautiful Taj (with his dead wife inside it) from his window overlooking the Yamuna river:
Aurangzeb became the 6th Emperor of the Mughal dynasty but he gets an unhappy ending. He expanded too much too fast, was too authoritative and rebellions and wars led to the exhaustion of the imperial Mughal treasury and the dynasty went into disarray. So ends the Mughal dynasty.
If there's a moral to this story, its this.... "if you cut your brothers' head off, make sure your plan is well thought out and you're not doing it just for the fun of it!".
I guess his parents also didn't teach him much about brotherly love.
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